19/06/2025
A meeting of masters.
As part of my musings, I wondered how a conversation may have flowed between the Zen Patriarch Bodhidharma (circa 527 AD) and the originator of Tai Chi Chuan, Zhang Sang Feng (circa 14th century)...
A pine branch swayed. Two historical figures from different times stood, though neither sought to arrive.
Zhang San Feng bows lightly, hands at the dantian.
“Honoured One. Though we have never met, I have always walked with you.”
Bodhidharma returns the bow, his eyes deep and still.
“And I have felt the echo of your movement in the stillness I kept. You come with lightness. What do you seek?”
Zhang San Feng:
“Not seeking, but returning. Your stillness prepared the ground. I moved to know what cannot move.”
Bodhidharma (nodding):
“You understand. Stillness is not absence of movement. It is the mother of it. I taught silence to shake the world awake.”
Zhang San Feng:
“And I taught movement to return to silence.
Yet without peace in the heart, no silence remains.”
Bodhidharma:
“Speak more of this.”
Zhang San Feng (quoting softly):
“Heart not peaceful, nature disturbed. Energy not accumulated, spirit disordered.
This is the condition of most. They seek flow, but their heart is restless. They seek awakening, but their breath is shallow.”
Bodhidharma:
“So you begin with peace?”
Zhang San Feng:
“I begin with the body, yes - open the meridians so that Qi can move.
But if the heart is not calmed, nature is stirred - and the Qi disperses.
If Qi is not gathered, it cannot support the Shen.
And when the Shen is disordered, the light of knowing is scattered.
We move, but do not see. We breathe, but do not live.”
Bodhidharma:
“This is also Zen. To see the nature directly - one must become still through and through.
The wall I faced for nine years was not a wall of stone. It was the wall of illusion.”
Zhang San Feng:
“And when illusion fell?”
Bodhidharma:
“There was nothing left to fall. I found what never moved.”
Zhang San Feng:
“Then we teach the same. You from stillness. I from continuity.
You from breaking illusion. I from dissolving it.
The Dao flows through both.”
Bodhidharma:
“And your Grand Ultimate - how do you describe it?”
Zhang San Feng:
“It begins in the Limitless Void.
From no separation arises Yin and Yang - movement and stillness.
They combine. They spiral. They generate the myriad things.
But the life of man, though shaped in the world, is not apart from the Void.
When energy and spirit are harmonised, the Way is remembered - not found.”
Bodhidharma (smiling faintly):
“Not found… because it was never lost.”
They sit now - one still as mountain, the other like mist settling into its basin. Between them, the pine does not move, and yet it sways.
